Sam Altman Advises Students to Master AI Tools for Future

Photo : Reuters

Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has given important advice to students about the future. He said students should learn how to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools. In an interview with Stratechery, Altman said AI is already doing a lot of work in many companies, especially in coding. He said AI now writes more than half of the computer code in some companies, according to Business Insider. He told students that knowing how to work with AI will help them get good jobs in the future.

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Altman explained that when he was young, the best skill to learn was coding. Now, he believes the most useful skill is knowing how to use AI tools. “When I finished high school, the smart thing was to be very good at coding. Now, the smart thing is to be very good at using AI tools,” he said. He thinks learning AI will help students in the long run as technology changes.

Many experts believe AI will do even more coding in the future. Dario Amodei, the head of AI company Anthropic, said AI could write up to 90% of all code in the next six months. Kevin Weil, an important person at OpenAI, also said AI may be better than human coders by the end of this year.

Altman agreed with these ideas and said AI is already playing a big role in coding. He talked about "agentic coding," which means AI might take over even more coding work in the future. He said this idea is still being worked on, and AI needs to improve before it can fully take over.

For students looking for jobs, Altman said they should not only focus on technical skills. He said students should learn how to adapt to new things and be ready for change. He believes the ability to learn and adjust to new technology is more important than knowing just one skill.

Altman also said AI might reduce the need for software engineers. Right now, there are many jobs for engineers, but as AI improves, companies may need fewer of them. "Each software engineer will be able to do much more work, but in the future, we may not need as many engineers," he explained.

He said that AI will not take jobs away all at once. Instead, it will happen slowly at first, then speed up over time. At first, only a few areas will be affected, but later, more industries will see changes.

Altman’s message to students is clear: AI is changing the world, and people who learn how to use it will have better chances for success in the future.